1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component and a mounting board therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, electronic components using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, or the like, include a ceramic body made of a ceramic material, internal electrodes formed within the ceramic body, and external electrodes mounted on external surfaces of the ceramic body so as to be connected to the internal electrodes.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor includes a plurality of stacked dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to face each other, having the dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to the internal electrodes.
Multilayer ceramic capacitors have been widely used as components in mobile communications devices such as laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, due to advantages thereof such as a small size, high capacitance, ease of mounting, or the like.
In accordance with the recent trend toward electronic devices having high performance as well as compact, slim form factors, demands have been made for electronic components having a small size, high performance, and high capacitance. In particular, as CPUs are increasingly being provided with higher speeds, the slimness, lightweightness, digitalization, and multifunctionalization of devices have increased, research into technology for implementing multilayer ceramic capacitor characteristics such as miniaturization, thinness, high capacitance, low impedance in a high frequency region, and the like, have been actively ongoing.
In addition, a multilayer ceramic capacitor has been usefully used as a bypass capacitor disposed in a power supply circuit in a large scale integration (LSI) scheme. The multilayer ceramic capacitor serving as the bypass capacitor needs to effectively remove high frequency noise. This demand is further increasing in accordance with the trend in which electronic devices increasingly operate in a high frequency band. The multilayer ceramic capacitor used as the bypass capacitor may be electrically connected to a mounting pad on a circuit board through soldering, and the mounting pad may be connected to other external circuits through wiring patterns or conductive vias in the circuit board.